Experiment: An Entire Month Without a Knife?

Here i go. One Month no knife use at all for any reason. This includes razors, scissors, clippers. Anything that cuts except my teeth and my wit. ( ill still be making knives, as i cant go broke) Ill be reporting to @BladeMagazine on my progress in detail. This will be hard! pic.twitter.com/I9kqq4ZhBO

Roger Barnes, of BC Cutlery Co., is running an experiment. He’s seeing what would happen if he went an entire month without using a knife, and he’s documenting the hurdles he comes across.

It’s an interesting thing to think about. Whether you use a knife or not, the conveniences that make modern living possible are grounded in a blade turning one thing into two things.

BLADE will be following Barnes as he plays out his experiment over the coming weeks, and summing everything up in an article. You can follow along, too, on Twitter.

Photographer Documents What Happens When Knifemaking Leaves Town

Jason Koxvold is a photographer who set out to document the decline of the cutlery industry in the Hudson Valley of New York, which for 150 years formed the bulk of that region’s economy. The result is KNIVES, a photo gallery depicting the fallout.

KNIVES is a project made over several years, using documentary photography to trace the shifting relationships between masculinity, myth, and violence in a rural town whose economic base remains eviscerated by globalisation.

The cutlery industry formed the economic backbone of New York’s Hudson Valley for over 150 years, until the Schrade knife factory abruptly moved production to China in 2004, leaving 500 men and women out of work. The town’s maximum security prison, Eastern Correctional Facility, became the largest employer in the area, shielded from the wider community by layers of secrecy. As businesses continued to close during the decade that followed, drug abuse, mental disorders, and rare cancers have become more widespread.

Koxvold’s work is less about the knife industry in general and more about the disruptive effects of a changing global economy on certain parts of the United States. Still, it’s worth a look for knife enthusiasts, if only to better understand how knives fit into the bigger picture.